Albanian Slide: The Roots to NATO's Pending Lost Balkan Enterprise.

• Author: Blumi, Isa
• Position: ARTICLE - North Atlantic Treaty Organization - Report

Introduction

Things were looking good for a while. At least that is what both Albanians living in the Balkans and abroad were telling themselves. With laudatory reports from indigenous politicians and a growing social media infrastructure, it was hard not to share in the optimism. As they awaited integration into the European Union (EU), all the distinct Albanian constituencies (inhabiting North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Presheve, Medvegje, and Bujanoc in Serbia, Montenegro, and the various adopted homelands overseas), exclaimed a pride and giddy self-assurance. The popular media in particular, be it Twitter or Albanian-language journals, offered plenty of evidence that the once feisty rhetoric of determined independence and nationalism had turned into a calming monotone of contentedness.

Of critical value was the apparent presence of Albanians--self-acknowledged or not--in the larger world. Albanians like Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha, and Dua Lipa top the music charts. Albanian sports stars win gold medals in Judo and score spectacular goals for the best football squads in the world. The best chef in the world, the most beautiful model, the hottest club scene, undiscovered coastlines, and membership in NATO, all constituted acknowledgements of Albanians' place in the world. For a people long ignored by the critical institutions of power, even derogatory statements about just how evil the Albanian mafia, is constituted publicity that reassured Albanians. Until recently, Albanians throughout the world felt they had gained access (at the expense, some old Marxist rebels lamented, of basic principles), to the Western table.

Alas, Albanian delusions were no panacea to reality. Beset by grinding economic austerity measures and structural adjustments agreed to by corrupt politicians in the 1990s and 2000s, Albanians throughout the Balkans have not seen a return for their considerable material and moral sacrifices. They are beginning to openly protest these conditions. Students shutting down the streets of Tirana and Pristina are only the latest in a series of collective action protests against egregiously unfair relations. (1) The growing popularity of those organizing the protests and the evidence of them turning violent, demands some introspection.

As with Kosovo's disgruntled population, in the Republic of Albania, integration into Europe required different, ever-expanding demands before actual accession negotiations began. Ongoing delays in the process have undermined previously reliable political alliances. (2) In the two other countries with important Albanian populations, North Macedonia and Montenegro, similar turmoil has emerged as both populations see no clear path to joining the union. While both countries are now NATO members, as Albanians elsewhere can attest, surrendering control of a country's military capacities does not translate into a smoother path into the EU. (3)

The resulting protests ultimately point to a common failure in Brussels and Washington to reward the peoples of the Balkans for their sacrifices. Instead, they are now faced with what is likely a global recession, hitting their region the hardest. Albanians, like Bosnians, Serbs, and Greeks, observe incredulously a shift taken by Washington that hints at more economic austerity and less funding to maintain a modest national budget. These changes, lament commentators, will have regional political consequences. For one, there will likely be a bigger role for outspoken nationalists as they push to open the Pandora's box of Southeast Europe: the redrawing of national boundaries. (4)

The following explores how this anger, manifested among Albanians, could threaten regional stability, and once an anticipated global economic slowdown impacts the region, contribute to tensions within a NATO alliance forced to adapt. The resulting crisis will ultimately underwrite a new discourse about what various parties' interests are as a new generation of political actors evoking ethno-national agendas throughout Eurasia gain popularity.

A Shift as Hopes Fade

A sense that the "fight" has been truncated before the desired unification of Albanian lands has become an enduring if largely "in-house" problem within Albanian societies of the former Yugoslavia. (5) Handing over their weapons in return for a NATO-imposed peace was a difficult concession for thousands of hardened fighters. They had spent the better part of the 1990s resisting Serbian/Macedonian rule and sacrificed far more than was ever acknowledged by the West. In this respect, many did not trust the new NATO hegemons. Bitter at NATO's ambiguous role in the 1990 wars, the suspicions of many Albanians had to be silenced. (6) One solution was to turn former rebel leaders into politicians. (7)

This tactic has not sat well with the men and women who have sacrificed so much. They openly admit they feel betrayed by those "hand-picked" by NATO to politically ease Albanians out of war. Indeed, the most successful "rebels" turned politicians--from Hashim Thaci, Agim Ceku, Ramush Haradinaj in Kosovo, Ali Ahmeti, Ahmet Krasniqi, and Samidin Xhezairi in North Macedonia--have helped impose severe conditions on their constituencies to accommodate the demands from the Balkans' new European and American masters. (8) The response to this political process of "decommissioning" rebel units has thus been blunt: those receiving political (and financial) rewards for cooperating with NATO have simply helped replace one colonial overlord with another. (9)

As will prove critical for the ensuing 20 years, Albanians were expected to surrender their economic sovereignty (something that Europeans themselves had seemingly agreed to with the creation of the EU). This was the agreed price Albanians would pay for a promised visa liberalization regime and a place in the community of nations. (10) The problem for Albanians has been the seemingly never-ending demands made on them to "reform" politically. In the meantime, they have also been expected to surrender their considerable natural wealth to outsiders. (11) As well-connected German, Israeli, and American companies loot their homelands, it is now clear that Albanians in large majorities believe the cost of surrendering of their political and economic sovereignty has been too high. (12)

Massive demonstrations throughout the Balkans since late 2018 expose the unkept promises made by the EU and American allies. Be it demands for a more balanced negotiation about Albania's "development" of natural resources, or opposing the United Nations' imposed regime of ethnically-based "decentralization" in Kosovo, a once patient, forgiving Albanian population has declared that they can no longer endure such deprivation. (13) As a result, the once lucrative ties between the local elite and their EU/U.S. sponsors have become liabilities in domestic politics. The near future consequently promises to be a violent readjustment with once privileged Albanians (and their Macedonian/Serbian counterparts), many historically servicing the EU/U.S. project through their well-funded NGOs and local think-tanks, facing anti-elite populist campaigns. (14)

With backs up against the wall, these once well-connected politicians and youth leaders will have no choice. In order to regain their popular credentials, many will use the kind of identity politics that sunk the entire region into a state of war in the past. Knowing that no party in Europe (but not necessarily in the U.S.) wants to see a replay of the 1990s, politicians and activists finding themselves unpopular at home and increasingly abandoned by their erstwhile European friends may resort to blackmail to regain their place in NATO's strategic calculations.

Many within the larger Albanian population may be amendable to such incitements. The recorded sense of anxiety found today articulated throughout the media and in waves of large street protests speaks of an anticipated reversal of friendly relations with stingy EU/U.S. allies. (15) Indeed, the tenor of the speeches via blowhorn that resonates in cities throughout the Western Balkans today suggests a population ready to abandon the mediating institutions and political, cultural elite the EU/U.S. installed in the late 1990s. Albanians, like their Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Greek counterparts, have reached their limit, and in many explicit ways via their protests have alerted the world there will be consequences. Drawing on interviews and on-the-ground engagement with many of the primary operatives of this "spring-like" upheaval in the making, it is possible to predict that we have reached a point of no return.

A Balkan Spring Awaits

Albanians, via their re-animated opposition leaders, say that they have had to bend over backward to satisfy what is now understood to be insincere demands for "reform" in return for entry into the EU. (16) Indeed, in Kosovo, the current political crisis discussed below is often framed in the context of the 95 different criteria being fulfilled to-date for the visa-free regime everyone seeks. From opposition leaders long hostile to the UN/NATO regime of compliance installed in the region since 1999 to the current prime minister, such burdens have destroyed hope. More critical today is the sense that this articulated sense of EU/U.S. betrayal came with the direct cooperation of now entrenched politicians, all of whom now face a populist backlash that will likely evolve into open revolts like those recently seen in Greece, France, and throughout the Middle East. (17)

Critically, unpopular politicians can stoke nationalist emotions and create new "facts" on the ground. Once pliable assets could simply switch from being the peacekeepers of the region to those upsetting stability. There is not much room left for Albanians to maneuver otherwise. As happened in the past, when cornered, Albanian survival tactics will ignite the larger Balkans. Adding fuel to the...